Archaeologists unearth village in Egypt older than the pharaohs

Archaeologists believe they have unearthed one of Egypt’s oldest-known settlements in the Nile Delta, dating back some 7,000 years to the Neolithic era.

The country’s ministry of antiquities announced the discovery of a village in the Tell el-Samara area of the Dakahlia governorate, north of Cairo, in a statement posted to Facebook on Sunday.

A joint team of Egyptian and French archaeologists say they located several storage silos where organic matter — such as animal bones and plant remains — were recovered in addition to fragments of pottery and stone tools.

These findings allowed the expedition to date the village to around 5,000 BC, which would mean it was established approximately 2,500 years before work began on the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of Egypt’s oldest and most famous structures.